


What Falling Feels Like

by loudspeakr



Series: How Summer Passed [1]
Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:06:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7862926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loudspeakr/pseuds/loudspeakr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Link tells his grandson the story of him and Rhett, and what happened in the summer of '16.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Falling Feels Like

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Was Last](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476314) by [missingparentheses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missingparentheses/pseuds/missingparentheses). 



“You ready, kid?”

Link fidgets beside the front door, his voice carrying up the stairs to the boy he waits for. At the lack of response, he glances briefly at himself in the mirror that hangs there in the foyer, pushing his greying quiff back and out of his eyes, before going back to bouncing from foot to foot. The sound of his car keys jangling noisily with every sidestep has his daughter appearing from around the corner.

Upon seeing her father’s impatience, Lily sends up her own call – _“Charlie, your grandfather’s waiting.”_ – before shooting him an apologetic look.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I told him to start getting ready an hour ago.” She sets a hand to her own hair, sliding it through her blonde locks, a nervous tic she inherited from him.

“That’s alright. I’m early, anyway.”

Nowadays, Lily looks every bit like her mother. An easy, radiant smile; a subtle grace she carries in her shoulders, even as she stands motionless before him.

Link’s gaze wanders to the family portrait in the entranceway, a photo of Locke standing proudly next to his wife, their infant son gathered between them. The three of them are the spitting image of Link, Christy, and baby Lily many decades earlier.

The sound of feet skipping down the stairs pulls Link out of his trance. Dressed plainly in jeans that hang too low and a black hoodie that swallows his head, Charlie acknowledges his mother and Link with a cursory glance when he reaches the ground floor.

“Okay, I’m ready,” he mumbles, earning himself a tut-tut from Lily, who pulls the hood from her son’s face. It reveals the beginnings of facial hair, a meagre sprouting of hairs just under the boy’s bottom lip and nowhere else. The sight pulls at the corner of Link’s mouth, threatening a smile. “Hey, Pops.”

Link graciously receives an awkward, one-armed hug from his lanky grandson, closing the height difference with practised ease before turning to the door. “Alright, let’s go.”

Following Charlie into the overcast morning outside, Lily touches a hand to her father’s shoulder.

“Thanks again for taking him, Dad. Means a lot.”

“Of course, baby girl.” A quick hug, and Link waves her goodbye. “We’ll be back before dark.”

Charlie has his earbuds in when Link joins him in the truck, music on so loud that Link can decipher the growling lyrics. He leans over and carefully pulls the buds from the boy’s ears.

“Not while I’m in the car with you,” he says, trying not to grimace at the annoyance that flashes on Charlie’s face. He pushes on. “Let’s have a conversation instead. We haven’t spent time together like this since…” Realising he doesn’t know the end of his own sentence, Link turns the key in the ignition and sets off toward the interstate.

A little ways down the road, once they’ve hit the smooth bitumen of the highway, Link switches the radio on. It’s already set to his favourite station, one that specialises in easy listening, and the song that plays soon has Link humming and harmonising along. Charlie turns away from his stoic view through the window to land a look on his grandfather.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Link hears him mutter through the music. It pulls a chuckle out of him, a reminder that Charlie himself is a budding musician, according to Link’s conversations with Lily over the phone.

“Really, son? It was my job for the longest time.” Glancing at him, Link clocks Charlie’s eyebrows lifting in surprise. “Your parents never told you?”

Charlie shakes his head wordlessly.

At this, Link instructs the boy to pop open the glove compartment in front of him. He hasn’t listened to any of their old music in a long time – in years – but today is as good a day as any to take a trip down memory lane. Charlie gently pushes a CD into the car’s dated audio system, and it whirls audibly in the device, the data beginning to play.

_“This is a song for when –“_

_“You run out of toilet paper.”_

The look on Charlie’s face is priceless, as vocals begin to fill the car.

_“I’ve been on this john for way too long_  
_Playing Candy Crush_  
_Before my legs fall completely asleep_  
_I better finish up and flush…”_

They listen to the rest of the song together, the teenager cracking an amused smile in Link’s presence for the first time since he can remember. When it finishes, Charlie is the first to speak.

“Pops, what is this?”

“That, son, is a song we wrote about running out of toilet paper.”

“A song you wrote… with Grandpa?”

Link chuckles again, as the next song begins to play. “Yeah, Charlie. With your Grandpa Rhett.” He can practically hear the boy’s mind turning this over, pondering what he’s just learned.

And then another question: “Wait, what was your job exactly?”

“Internetainer.”

“Wha–? Internet entertainer?”

“No, _internetainer_.”

“As in –”

“As in, we _internetained_ people.”

Charlie lets out a giggle of sorts, a wondrous sound in itself. “Right.”

The turn their conversation has taken sparks something in Link then. He hasn’t thought about it in a while – and he’s never liked the phrase ‘the good old days’ because every day should be a good day – but working with his best friend all those years ago, creating together, those were his good old days.

Those were the best of days.

“So you wrote songs together?”

“We did more than that. We had a show, we did comedy sketches. We did lots of stupid stuff together on camera.”

“I didn’t know you guys were that close.”

Link’s stomach drops. He doesn’t like to think about what happened to him and his closest friend, having buried those days long ago somewhere deep in his subconscious. But there’s no doubting the way Rhett’s hard grey eyes had stared daggers into him at their last family gathering. They kept rooms between them, kept the relatives talking to ward the other away. However, decades of looking out for one another still held true, as Link often found himself locking eyes with the man heads taller than the rest, a stormy expression shot at him from across the room. Each look was a punch in the gut, leaving Link with no choice but to leave early, stealing away into the night without a single goodbye.

“What happened, Pop?”

Sighing, Link stops the CD midway through his verse in _My Hair Goes_. “It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long drive,” the boy shoots back, and despite himself, his boldness has Link smiling.

“Okay then, smartass. Where do I begin?”

He’s told this story many times in his life – the story of Rhett and Link – to fans, to strangers curious about their shared history, in awe of their decades-old friendship. It is usually shortened for time, skipping lesser parts for the bigger moments in their lives and shared career. But his audience today is his grandson, his own blood, so Link endeavours to tell the story in its fullest form as if he has never told it before.

He starts with elementary school, with the infamous defacement of their desks. (He specifically leaves out the words they wrote because, after all these years, even those have somehow become sacred.) He tells Charlie about sitting across from Rhett over a table as boys, a tape recorder between them, using funny voices and competing to make the other laugh first.

There’s the story of their respective first kisses and their first girlfriend, of floating down Cape Fear River and almost missing Rhett’s scholarship basketball game, of planning and eventually leaving for college together. He talks about their freezer full of Big Macs, about how certain types of vanilla ice-cream are definitely better than others, about Wax Paper Dogz and how he literally lost his mind snowboarding. He talks about getting married, one after the other, about starting their company in the year between, how they were in a car leaving a different wedding reception with Charlie’s grandmothers when they were told to follow their dreams.

Link tells Charlie about the basement where they sat every week in front of a webcam, the mess of cables that poured over their makeshift desk with a green screen propped up behind them, their audience growing from hundreds to thousands to tens of thousands the longer their web-show broadcasted. He talks about Commercial Kings (he promises to show Charlie some episodes when they get back later), about the taxidermy lizard that was given to them by a kind old man. How they moved to Los Angeles with a truck full of their belongings, about dancing across state lines, about how their show was cancelled after one season, and how out of the ashes rose Good Morning Chia Lincoln, which eventually turned into Good Mythical Morning (and The Mythical Show in between).

“So you did this Good Mythical Morning until you retired?”

“No, actually. We did something else as well.”

For all intents and purposes, Buddy System was a success. It had been well-received by their audience, its views were good and steady for a long time, and the payoff – both monetarily and personally – had certainly been worth it.

But if Link had to pinpoint the beginning of his and Rhett’s demise, Buddy System was it.

“Charlie, I’m going to talk to you about something that I don’t tell very many people.” The boy visibly perks up at his grandfather’s words. “Only a handful of other people really know about this, and now I’m going to tell you because, well, I don’t know. You’re the eldest, and you grew up in our family, so...”

When Charlie nods obediently, Link forces himself to say it aloud. (He’s never said it aloud before.)

“Your Grandpa Rhett and I…” But Charlie is too quiet, too still beside him, and the words sound all wrong. So he starts again. “You have to understand: he wasn’t just my friend, Charlie. He was my family, too, for the longest time, way before your mom and dad even got together. He was my…”

Link lets himself drift off, his thought suspended as he attempts to find the right way to start. He’s always had a terrible memory, but there’s a day that still hangs around, crystal-clear, in the crevices of his mind like a dingy old VHS tape. He lets it play one more time, choosing to relive it for the sake of the tale he has weaved for his grandson so far.

 

_Finding peace in and amongst the thrumming bustle of a shooting day is usually an arduous task, but Link manages to find refuge in the privacy of his trailer. He’s been up since four this morning: the songbirds outside his window hadn’t yet woken to greet him with their song, the sky still a cloak of inky black as he started his car and drove toward the McLaughlin house._

_The stillness of the trailer becomes somewhat stifling, so Link sets his fingernails on the end table next to him and drums a nonsensical beat. Even as he rests, the unbound energy that coils in his limbs demands release, and soon, his leg is joining in, too, turning him into a one-man percussion band._

_This is how Rhett finds him: a twitching bundle of nerves attempting to settle down. There is no hello, no announcement of his arrival. They are, after all, mere halves of a whole, as they always have been._

_Rhett folds himself down into the couch opposite Link, who eyes him off as he sits for a moment, just sits there, and Link just can’t understand how anyone can sit so still. He tried it once: his mother, fed up with his ceaseless energy, told him not to move for a whole hour, and he tried – he really did – but soon his leg was jumping, and his hand was tapping, and it was all over just like that._

_But Rhett remains unmoving before him, his eyes closing as if to gather himself, and when they do, Link can see the faint purple smudges underneath his eyes and the slight tremble in his bottom lip as it parts in breath. The man is tired, and Link is the only person – aside from Rhett’s wife – who is allowed to witness him in this state._

_For everyone else, Rhett is constant and unwavering._

_For Link, Rhett bends and breaks and falls. Link’s Rhett is human._

_Link coughs then – to dispel the build-up of weird atmosphere in here, to break the quiet, he isn’t really sure why, but he does notice he himself has stopped fidgeting, his palms resting flat on his thighs. So he taps his foot just for the sake of doing so, and Rhett’s steel-grey gaze still doesn’t meet his. Instead, Rhett reaches for his guitar and lays it carefully across his lap, beginning to strum a familiar tune._

_“_ You know what day it is, it’s Thursday, _”_ _Link picks up on it automatically, singing in a voice he keeps reserved for only the two of them. This is how it works: one leads, the other always follows. “_ And Thursday means mail. _”_

_They go over it once more, Rhett remaining silent as he lets Link’s voice wrap around the melody, before the song ends with its final note lingering softly in the air between them._

_“You should teach me,” Link hears himself say, and Rhett pulls his focus up from the floor. He looks at Link then, quirking an eyebrow. “Yeah, I mean,” Link’s babbling now, he knows, but he isn’t sure if Rhett knows it, too. “What if you have a terrible accident one day and you can’t play the mail song for us? How will we go on?”_

_He gives Rhett a nervous smile to heighten his joke, and though Rhett doesn’t share it with him, he does stand with the guitar and joins Link on his side of the trailer. They sit shoulder to shoulder, Rhett on the right and Link on the left, when Rhett hands him his instrument. Link would usually pretend to fumble with it, wanting to put on a show for the audience around them, but there is no audience here, they’re alone, and Rhett’s guitar is sacred. So he grips the neck of it carefully, closing his hand around it finger by finger, and cradles the body as if the slightest amount of pressure could reduce it to splinters._

_Without speaking, Rhett positions Link’s fingers for him, gentle hands moving Link’s frozen limbs for him, and leans back once he is done. Link takes it as a sign to strum, and the first chord rings out sweetly. Rhett leans in again and readjusts Link’s hold on it, and Link just barely recalls where his fingers were last time, feeling so oddly tense under Rhett’s touch. Rhett leans back again, and Link strums, and the song – though slow – begins to come together._

_They spend the next few minutes in just the same way, never talking, with Rhett showing Link the rest of the song’s basic chords. Rhett tries to show Link how to pick the section just before the last two chords, but when Link finds it too difficult, they decide to forego it altogether._

_Link isn’t sure how much time has passed since they began his lesson, but judging from the orange hue that peeks in through the blinds, whole hours must have passed. Rhett leans back one last time, crossing his arms and closing his eyes. His expression is peaceful, pleasantly blank, and Link realises he is being left to his own devices. So he tries to play by himself, positioning his fingers on the frets he thinks he remembers. He strums, but the chord is wrong, twanging incorrectly. Double-checking himself, he tries again, but the same thing happens. The guitar is discarded, put aside roughly against the side of the couch, and Link huffs, leaning back onto the cushions himself._

_He startles when Rhett moves again, the slumbering giant coming back to life. Rather than a fury at the mishandling of his instrument, Rhett sighs and rests his head on Link’s shoulder, eyes still shut to the world. But his massive palm wanders, settles on Link’s thigh, anchoring him to this moment they are sharing._

_“Sorry I couldn’t get it, brother,” Link babbles again, attempting to diffuse whatever this is fast becoming now. “Guess we should just leave the playing to you, huh?”_

_His heart is beating a thousand miles a minute for_ _some reason, and he’s painfully conscious of the fact that Rhett can hear each one, with his ear pressed flush against Link’s body. But Rhett has always known Link’s innermost workings, always listened and understood and memorised, and maybe this isn’t so different to that._

_Rhett sighs again, and Link knows what he wants to do next, knows that he wants to be brave. His hand drifts over Rhett’s and covers it, and he can feel each tendon under the skin, the blood vessels that keep Rhett warm. Ever so gently, his fingers trace over Rhett’s knuckles, tickling the hairs that grow on the back of his hand. His eyes don’t dare wander, instead watching for a reaction, anything._

_He gets one: a finger twitches but stays, and it’s a reassuring first response._

_Link looks down to see Rhett is watching, too, and soon his hand is being lifted, the one beneath his turning under his touch. Then Rhett’s long fingers close through the gaps between Link’s._

_(This is how it works: one leads, the other always follows.)_

_And as if on cue, Rhett tilts his head up to look at Link, and there are those steel-grey eyes again, reading Link as clear as day, so he’s sure Rhett sees it coming, what Link’s about to do._

_It’s the lightest kiss, almost nothing at all, a simple touching of skin to skin. But Link is dizzy with the thrill of it, with relief because this feels like where they’ve always been heading and he’s here now, and so is Rhett. His head swims from the revelation, but honestly, the words don’t match the way his body has reacted. His heart rate slows to skip to its usual rhythm, his hands surprisingly steady and unshaken._

_Then Rhett shifts again, sitting up, standing from his place next to Link, the floor creaking under his feet, and Link dreads the look he might find on his best friend’s face when he turns around again._

_But there’s no time to judge whether he’s in for it or not, because Rhett’s coming in again, landing another press of his mouth against Link’s before pulling away, walking away, and swinging the trailer door shut behind him, leaving Link in a wake of silence, stunned and alone, his idle heart the fullest it has felt in years._

 

“You… love him?”

There is no disgust, no malice in his grandson’s voice, only naked curiosity in the way his grey-green eyes shine at him. But Link cringes anyway. He answers Charlie’s question with a reluctant shrug, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

“But you kissed him,” the boy presses, like the thought of his grandfathers kissing isn’t a strange idea at all. Still, Link doesn’t say a word. “Unless it was an accident…?”

A questioning silence blankets over them both, and Link lets it lull him with its empty comfort. He has spent many moments alone in the quiet of Rhett’s wake, moments where there should’ve been light and laughter. Instead, he drudges through each day with his memories and his regrets, letting them rule over him like he has finished living a life that waits for him to retake control.

“I’ve had many accidents in my life, Charlie, but this wasn’t one of them.”

It had taken a long time for Link to comprehend it himself, the eventual aftermath of their time together in the trailer. When filming for Buddy System wrapped, Link returned to the GMM set with a renewed sense of self. He was kinder, he was braver. He guffawed instead of chuckled, he loved instead of liked. With the presence Rhett gifted him each day, Link had become the best version of himself he could have ever hoped to be.

He thought his friend felt the same.

Then, one day, Rhett withdrew, caving in on himself to a place where Link couldn’t reach him. The jokes stopped, as did the laughter and the looks. It all slipped away like dandelion seeds in the wind, and Link could only watch as Rhett slowly but surely disappeared from his life.

Numbly, Link sent their employees home for the last time by himself. He packed up the studio alone, despite Stevie’s protests, his mind always wandering to the resignation letter torn and tossed in the corner of their past office. Link took the microphone, the Wheel, the Lionel painting, the boxes and boxes of mementos from their fans around the world, everything that _Rhett and Link_ owned, and hid it all away in a storage unit he still pays for, even now to this day. He isn’t even sure he remembers where he keeps the key.

Years passed, friends tried and left, Christy held Link’s hand until she could no longer. And then Lily came home one night, Locke by her side as if he were destined to belong there, and Link’s battered heart felt a warmth it had gone so long without.

Mere weeks later, Link saw Rhett again. He stood across the room alone, tall, dark and brooding in a well-worn suit that fit his towering frame just right, hugging Link’s daughter closely, fawning over the ring his son had placed on her finger. Though time had aged him, kindly but not subtly, Rhett McLaughlin remained the same. Rhett McLaughlin grinned and joked and sparkled, while Link cowered in the opposite corner, shocked and hurt at the way his heart still yearned for this familiar stranger.

Where Rhett McLaughlin had endured, _constant and unwavering_ , Link had fallen apart.

It was then, with a tightness in his chest that he thought he’d grown used to, that Link realised: Rhett and Link, in every sense of the phrase, were no more.

“Do you miss him, Pop?”

The question brings Link back to the present, his eyes watering from delving into the past. He can feel the weight of his grandson’s intent stare boring into the side of his head, but he doesn’t look. Charlie knows the answer, Link is sure. The boy just wants him to admit it.

And for the first time in a long time, Link relents. “Every day, Charlie. Always.”

Once upon a time, Link had believed in a different kind of _always_ , an always that would see he and Rhett through to their old age, through births and weddings and so many celebrations, through to the day they would be forced to say goodbye. Now, Link knew of only this always, an always that ached and bled, one that sought for its own end rather than pushing for more.

“He still loves you, y’know,” Charlie says, voice no louder than a whisper. He hands the words over to his grandfather like a gift, and before he even asks for context, Link accepts them in his desperation, closing his hands around them, keeping them close.

“What do you mean?”

“I can tell. He looks at you funny.”

His grandson’s sure candidness has Link smiling through his gloom. “That doesn’t mean much, Charlie. He always looked at me funny.”

Charlie frowns, gaze dropping down to his hands fiddling in his lap. “I guess, but he looks at Grandma the same way.”

“What? Your Grandma Jessie?” The air freezes in Link’s lungs.

The boy brings a hand up to scratch at his jaw, embarrassed. “Yeah, I notice it a lot. He goes all quiet, and he looks at her and just watches. Doesn’t look away until someone talks or catches him or something.” Then he pauses, his mind ticking over before he speaks again. “It’s the same way he looks at you, Pop.”

Above them, the sun nudges out from behind the cloud cover that had threatened to linger the entire day. A ray of light touches Link’s hand where it grasps at the wheel, warming his knuckles with a glowing caress. He lets it soak in, the ice in his soul melting away under its radiance.

In his periphery, Link catches a glimpse of the welcome sign whirring past as they drive beyond the gates, the main building of Charlie’s prospective college emerging from behind the trees.

“Are you nervous, son?”

Beside him, Charlie smiles, the apples of his cheeks pushing up. It is a smile as bright as the sun that greets them now, as true as his grandfather’s before him.

“Yeah, but I’ll be okay.”

Link nods in agreement. They both will be.

**Author's Note:**

> So a couple of things led to the writing of this fic:
> 
> 1) I had a [slightly suspicious inkling](http://loudspeakr.tumblr.com/post/148687685659/okay-i-know-people-have-already-said-this) a few weeks ago that something had occurred between RandL during the season 9-10 break, a something that needed to be explored imo.
> 
> 2) The look I refer to that Rhett is constantly giving Link is, well, his regular heart-eyes, but more specifically, [this one](http://loudspeakr.tumblr.com/post/149330533399/graveyard-whistler).
> 
> 3) Link [playing Rhett's guitar](http://loudspeakr.tumblr.com/post/148783975154/graveyard-whistler-i-finally-get-to-play) somewhat coherently means Rhett must've taught him at some point.
> 
> 4) I am STILL (and always will be) in love with the world [missingparentheses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missingparentheses/pseuds/missingparentheses) created in their fic [I Was Last](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6476314) (5eva my #1), so the base concept of Link as a grandparent with a grandson named Charlie came from there. (Although Charlie in that fic isn't Lily and Locke's child, but I loved the name so much that I changed it, heh. I mean, HOW CUTE IS "Charles Lincoln 'Charlie' Neal V"???)
> 
> (edit: Okay, I did a not-so-clever thing here ^ but I think I may have fixed it. See comments below.)
> 
> Also, sorry for the general sadness, hehe. _Always_ is a word I almost exclusively associate with our boys nowadays, so I thought it'd be fun to explore the "anti-always" for once. LOOK, I RLY AM SORRY, OK? I'll make sure the next fic I write is nice and happy and fluffy for you guys, cos ily all and you deserve it!  <3
> 
> As usual, thank you so much for reading~!


End file.
